Jenny’s Blog

Well, here it is… My updated website. FINALLY. Over the next several months I will be updating and adding cool new features and games, but first I thought it was high time that I update my old website to this newer and cooler and much more better site where I can blog and answer some frequently asked questions.

Today the first question that I get asked the most is actually from other struggling writers. The question has several variations on the theme, but is essentially about what to do when you have a story rolling around inside your head and yet when you sit down to write it, your mind goes into some hyperdrive frission that short-circuits the functionality of your fingers, which in turn wipes every idea that you have had about this story completely from you memory.

In short, my dears, what to do about writer’s block?

There are several things you can do and I will address only one of them in today’s blog. (I do after all have to save some of my more brilliant solutions for later blogs.)

The first thing I do when I run flat into that wall of uninspired doldrums is I pick up a book of one of my favorite authors J.K. Rowling and I start reading, paying attention to HOW she crafts her stories. She is, without dispute, one of the most successful authors to date and so it is a clever move to study what she does from an academic standpoint. Plus she’s a bloody good writer. But not everyone is going to have the Harry Potter passion that I do, so I recommend that you STUDY one of your favorite authors paying particular attention to the way they pull off the various plotpoints of the storyline, how they build the tension, and keep you as a reader interested.

Then study the details of each character and how each person in the story is carefully defined, how much of the scene the writer paints for you, and how much detail you as the reader fill in.

Using J.K. Rowling as an example again, if you have ever read any of the Harry Potter books, you will know that she does a supreme job in creating the universe in such a way that you literally drop into the action and are part of the story. You can see the castle and the lake. Her characters are well defined and she RARELY misses a beat when carrying forward the story from the previous novel. I would bet that she has stacks upon stacks of detailed notes and descriptions. I also know for a fact that she doodles out some of the images that she sees in her head, probably to make them more real to her so that she can truly communicate what she sees in her imagination.

It is those details that while trying and difficult to define make the difference between an average story and really great read, regardless of genre.

A quick exercise to do is to rip a page from a magazine with a pretty picture on it and start writing down every detail you see on the picture. Get as poetic and metaphoric as you wish, but focus on the nuance of colors and textures you see and lights and darks, shadows, those things which in passing we might all overlook. This exercise will start to train your mind to think in detailed patterns and in turn will make your writing easier.

Stay tuned for the next step to THIS process. In the meantime, feel free to post your musings here.

However, be warned, if you say anything rude on here I do (as the administrator) have the power to remove it immediately and will do so!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 9:02 pm and is filed under For Writers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.